Grand-torino: Shane sends Sox to Series

BOSTON -- Ben Cherington was in his office. He was by himself.

"I was trying to not allow my anxiety to affect everyone else," he said.

The architect of this World Series-bound Red Sox team had sped up his television -- he has the option to watch the game on the tape-delayed feed the public was getting or on the in-house, real-time feed. He saw the home run on his TV just as he felt the eruption of the building around him.

A grand slam by Shane Victorino in the seventh inning lifted Boston to a 5-2 win in Game Six of the American League Championship Series. The win punched for the Red Sox a ticket to their third World Series in the last 10 years, a remarkable accomplishment for a team that lost 93 games a year ago.

It was the second dramatic grand slam in as many home games for the Red Sox in the ALCS, who rallied in Game Two behind a line-drive grand slam by David Ortiz off Tigers closer Joaquin Benoit. This one came after Jonny Gomes, Xander Bogaerts and Jacoby Ellsbury had reached base against Tigers starter Max Scherzer and lefty reliever Drew Smyly. Veras had been called upon specifically to pitch to Victorino. He wound up being an unwitting part of Red Sox history.

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Mike Napoli was in the dugout at the moment Victorino hit the ball out. He was next to David Ross. Between them, the two have a forest's worth of facial-hair growth. Theirs are two of the three most impressive beards on a team whose identity was forged by the beard.

Ross asked Napoli, "What are you going to do if he hits a grand slam?"

Napoli said, "I'm going to kiss you!"

The image of Napoli and Ross locked in something of a dance-hug in front of the Red Sox dugout as Victorino circled the bases could be as indelible as that of Victorino circling the bases.

It almost looked like Napoli kissed Ross, the first baseman was told.

"I did!" he said.

Everyone in the dugout went as ballistic as everyone in the stands.

"I was about to hug (Ryan) Lavarnway and pick him up and throw him in the stands," Daniel Nava said.

Bench coach Torey Lovullo was standing next to John Farrell in the dugout, as he so often is during games. Everyone in the dugout went crazy.

"Total eruption," Lovullo said.

Lovullo did not kiss anyone.

"Not yet," he said with a wide grin. "But the night is young."

Will Middlebrooks was in the dugout, too. He was on the bench in Game Six, just as he was for almost all of Game Five. He appears to have lost his job at third base to prodigy Xander Bogaerts for the time being. There's almost no doubt Bogaerts will be at third base and Middlebrooks will be on the bench in Game One of the World Series on Wednesday.

But Middlebrooks was just as into the game on Saturday as he was at Comerica Park on Thursday when he came off the bench to make a head's-up baserunning play Bogaerts probably wouldn't have made had he still been in the game. Middlebrooks was watching with catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia. He knew what was coming.

"Salty and I were sitting there, talking, 'Man, it sure would be nice if he hit one out right here,'" Middlebrooks said. "We knew (Veras) liked to throw his curveball. He's got a good curveball. We didn't think he would trust his two-seamer because (Victorino) was so close to the plate. He didn't want to hit him with the bases loaded. We figured he'd throw him a curveball."

Arnie Beyeler was in the coach's box next to first base. Beyeler never made it to the major leagues as a player. He spent 13 seasons riding the buses as a manager in the minor leagues. He'd waited two decades for an opportunity to join a coaching staff like he did for the first time under Farrell this year.

What Beyeler was watching at first was Victorino -- who had thrown his hands in the air as soon as the ball left the bat, Yasiel Puig-style. What Beyeler didn't want to have happen was for the ball to scrape off the Green Monster and Victorino not to get to second base.

"When guys hit balls, to me, you're never sure whether they're going or not," Beyeler said. "I was just yelling at him to run."

When the ball landed in the first row of the Monster seats, Victorino didn't have to run -- but he kept running anyway.

"Once it went out, I looked at him -- he was about 10 feet from the bag," Beyeler said. "It was pretty emotional. This place went crazy."

Ryan Dempster was in the bullpen when Victorino came to the plate. Dempster is in his 16th major-league season. He's a starting pitcher by trade who has pitched out of the bullpen this postseason to shore up what was supposed to be the team's biggest weakness. The grand slam Victorino hit off Veras sent Dempster to his first World Series.

"We sat there and we just said, 'Please hang a curveball,'" he said. "He did. Vic hit it out. Everybody went crazy. Sitting on the bench all year, you get this different view of what the game is like -- and when you're in the bullpen and you see the ball go out and you can see all the fans, it's like Fenway Park is bouncing."

Clay Buchholz was up in the clubhouse, sitting on one of the couches and watching the game on TV. He'd gone through his postgame routine after he left the game an inning earlier. He'd just finished icing his arm.

Buchholz and reliever Franklin Morales were alone in a quiet Red Sox clubhouse that an hour or so later would be drenched with champagne and cheap beer.

"Right when it happened, we got our stuff on and ran back down to the dugout," he said.

Cherington lieutenant Mike Hazen was in his office with fellow executives Allard Baird and Eddie Romero when Victorino came up to the plate in the seventh inning. Romero was sitting on the floor, watching the game from there. The trio had made the move to the office just before that, trying to do what they could to turn the tide of the game -- just like the fans in homes across New England who shifted from couch to chair or turned hats backward or just closed their eyes and prayed.

"That's been sort of the lucky spot during the course of the season," Hazen said, "so we kind of went down to change it up a little bit."

Then everything changed.

"Nobody really said anything," Hazen said. "We just kind of stared at each other. It was crazy. It was crazy. That's been the kind of stuff that's happened all year long with this team. It's pretty special."

Chief operating officer Sam Kennedy was up in Suite 13B with "about 20 of us packed into an area for eight people," he said. Watching Victorino walk to the plate, senior vice president Adam Grossman said what just about everyone probably was thinking: "Why doesn't he just hit a double, and we'll call this whole thing off?"

Victorino did more than that. The room erupted.

To Kennedy, the grand slam -- and the trip to the World Series -- was a validation of the work done by Cherington and his staff starting even before the end of last year's 93-loss disaster. The work Kennedy does involves the Red Sox as a business and as a brand, but he knows the Red Sox first and foremost are a baseball team.

"All the baseball guys worked so hard for this," he said. "These guys have been on a mission since spring training. They really have -- especially after what we went through. This is really, really exciting. But we're not done yet."

And that brings us back to Cherington, who by himself at his desk in his office because he certainly couldn't enjoy what was happening before the Victorino home run. That's how he handles anxious moments. This was an anxious moment.

Cherington watched Victorino take one curveball and foul another curveball off. That set up the pitch that sent the Red Sox to the World Series.

"I knew he was going to go breaking ball 0-2, and then it stayed up on the plate enough," Cherington said. "I thought it was gone off the bat. When I saw his reaction, I thought it had a good chance."

Once the ball went out, the as-superstitious-as-anyone Cherington decided not to move again until the game ended. That was all he could do to help. He'd already done all he could. It was up to Craig Breslow and Koji Uehara to close the game out.

"When you're watching every pitch in games like this, you know how much it means to our players and the people in our clubhouse," Cherington said. "We know how much passion they have for winning these games. We want it for them. Those of us in the front office, we're kind of just along for the ride at this point. When the games start, we're rooting so hard. We're fans."

Once the game ended, an executive again, Cherington made his way down to the clubhouse to meet the players -- the players on the roster he'd built, the players who won the American League East and dispatched the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALDS before taking down the Detroit Tigers. Next up are the St. Louis Cardinals -- and make no mistake, in the Red Sox clubhouse there's still an eye on what's next.

"I got the same reaction as we did last round," Cherington said. "We're very happy, excited and proud of the accomplishment -- but there's a sense they have more to do. But it's gratifying, no doubt about it."